I just got off the phone with The Top Secret Writer. He is driving to Colorado to pick up his kids. He got the pdf prototype last night and raved about the images, but we're still at an impasse with the cartoon ballons. Meanwhile, Will Shetterly sent me a link to the V For Vendetta site and I took a look at the way they handled the baloons. Intriguing, but we still need something that works for our hybrid.
We are now going to strip down the prototype into more of a movie trailer and play the tease for all its worth:
Big voice: "Two slim whirlwinds with issues, fight to the death, before retiring to casino life on the res."
Last night I practiced my best Fred Remington style, aping several character types by the Western master. Here they are:
The trick will be to take this style and apply it to our characters in the Top Secret Story, so that Remington will be illustrating characters and scenes from our story. Then I need to marry those sketches with a funky, aged texture, so that it looks like a page out of Remington's sketchbook a la 1888. Very ambitious, but I'm not aware of anyone ever doing this in a story. Usually it's a writer (think Viva Villa and Lawrence of Arabia), but since this is a graphic novel, how fitting that an artist is our conduit in the story. And we see his art. And if I do it right, some readers will wonder, "Is that really Remington's sketches? Did he really sketch Tom Horn and Al Sieber?" Of course he didn't, but he was there at the same time as they were. Unfotrunately he didn't have the ability to see who would become famous a century later. This isn't just Fred's problem. Ha.
On Wednesday I bought long-stemmed roses for all the women in our office (8), then went back to Bashas' and bought a dozen roses for Kathy. Tonight we're going to dinner at Cartwright's, next door, for a post-valentine's day treat (she's buying).
Onion Headline de Jour
Upper-Middle-Class Man Vows To Never Forget Middle-Class Roots
"To be elated at success and disappointed at failure is to be the child of circumstances: how can such a person be called master of himself?"
—Old Vaquero Saying
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